Back to the Blogging...This time from Cape Town. Updates on my life in South Africa. My thoughts about whatever may come up, my impressions, plus photos and videos.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Saturday, August 7, 2010, 3:42 AM Cape Town Time- My Dorm (LBG)

So I'll start today's post with what I did last night. I watched the movie School Daze with a friend. It had a few effects on me. First off seeing the movie made me reminisce to the first time I watched it with my line brothers. Ha. Memories. Seeing the stepping and the shots of the old school Kappas in the movie made me really miss my chapter and my old head frat brothers. I do look forward to taking part in the "Good Ol' Kappa Spirit" when I get back stateside.

There's also a scene in there that spoke to me where Samuel L. Jackson and his band of townie guys conflict with Laurence Fishburne's crew from Mission College. It made me think about the kind of conflict that happens between making "out" and the people back home. I really love Chicago and my hood there and I value my ability to walk through Ragtown and be greeted with warmth and respect. I always try when I'm there to not think of myself as better or above the place or people.I just made a view different decisions and I was blessed in different ways with different opportunities. But there's one part where Jackson's character tells the college boys that "Y'all niggas just like us and you always gon' be niggas." and Fishburne tells him "You're not niggas." I'm somewhere between them. With the understanding that the usage of the word in that context was decidedly negative I don't disagree with Jackson's base point. You don't really ever transcend or overcome the set of circumstances that made you. Racial, geographical, financial, religious, everything. Regardless of where you go those things are still a part of you and had a formative influence on you. I read an article about Kevin Coval's "transformation" from Suburban jock to hip-hop poet today but I think he's a prime example. He's never not suburban and he doesn't run from it because he can't. He understands it, learns from it, peeps the good and bad of the situation, and moves from there. That's all you can do with anything that happens in your life.

The movie also made me miss my sister Jamesa because it got me to thinking about black college bands and all that. I didn't think about it when I applied to come here but because I'm here during her senior fall I'll probably never see her march with FAMU again. That actually makes me really sad. Going to all her games at Morgan Park and with FAMU was a big influence on me culturally and musically. I love black marching band music and it definitely informs my sensibilities (think about songs like "Pompous"). I miss her. I want to go to country ass Northern Florida.

Anyway, today was a pretty good day. My first lecture was canceled so we had a substitute guy who let us out after like 20 minutes. After class I studied some and then I went to the sports centre and signed up for the gym. I went back to the sports centre that evening and played pickup basketball with a bunch of guys. I was actually surprised about how closely they follow the NBA. They were as up on the goings on of the game as me and in some ways more since they didn't have a particular team that they felt the need to be tied to and they just kind of observe as a fan of the game. It was dope though.

Went to dinner with friends tonight. T'was good. Spent the night having some good conversations with folks around and then folks back home via the net. Good times.

"some of my niggas will probably never make it. the s-a-ts? shit, I doubt they ever take it, cause instead of tryna send a nigga to a tutor them guidance counselors tryna introduce us to recruiters. it's a setup."

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About Me

Nate Marshall is the star of the award winning full-length documentary “Louder Than A Bomb” and has been featured on HBO’s “Brave New Voices. He is from the South Side of Chicago and currently is a junior at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN where he studies English and African American Studies. His work has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution: Redux, The Vanderbilt Review, on Chicago Public
Radio and in many other publications. He was a 2010 finalist for the Guild Complex’s
Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. He is also a rapper who has released two
albums with the group Daily Lyrical Product and recently released his first solo EP,
“The Langston Huge Project.” "Unconditional Like" is his second chapbook of poetry.